Haiti, Failed and Failing
"You see the conditions they live in? This is an armed revolution. We will put guns in the hands of every child if we have to." "The bourgeoisie, the opposition the government, they are the problem." "They call us gangs -- they are the gangs! We're defending the ghetto. It's live or die here." Jimmy (Barbecue) Cherizier, Port-au-Prince, Haiti
"We prioritize dialogue, even in our fight with bandits and gangs." "I am the president of all Haitians, the good and the bad." President Jovenel Moise, Haiti
"The government has said nothing about [Cherizier's rise], and the international community has turned a blind eye." "There is no rule of law anymore. The gangs are the new Macoutes. It feels like there is a manifest will to install a new dictatorship." Pierre Esperance, director, National Human Rights Defense Network, Haiti
"Coronavirus is the perfect excuse for a power grab and authoritarian measures to crack down on political opponents." "This is a regionwide trend, but the consequences are worse in the countries already facing the most dire situations." Michael Shifter, president, Inter-American Dialogue, Washington
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| In this May 24, 2019, photo, Barbecue, whose real name is Jimmy Cherizier, is carried by a resident in his neighborhood in Lower Delmas, a district of Port-au-Prince, Haiti. He’s a former policeman, a suspect in the massacre of dozens of men, women and children and a hero in his neighborhood, followed by crowds of adoring residents who consider him their protector. (AP Photo/Dieu Nalio Chery) |
The 52 year-old former business executive, Jovenel Moise won the 2017 presidential election with a thin base of support amid allegations of government corruption. Last year protests by students and opposition groups led to a Peyi Lok [country shutdown] that lasted three months during which time businesses were torched, hotels and restaurants shuttered while thousands of Haitians were left without employment. Eventually the national police joined the protests burning their own vehicles and blocking traffic in Port-au-Prince's major arteries.
"There's no possibility of holding elections while he's in power", Andrew Michel, spokesman for an alliance of opposition parties stated, as legislative elections have been postponed indefinitely. Haiti is the poorest of poor nations in the Western Hemisphere and as dysfunctional as can possibly be conceived. All the international assistance that has been poured into the country has failed to result in positive changes. When Poppa Doc Duvalier ran the country as his personal estate and his dread police the Tonton Macoutes ran amok, that was rock bottom.
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And Haiti is now experiencing a renaissance of rock bottom. A coalition, improbable as it sounds, of violent gangs, has arisen under the command of Jimmy Cherizier whose nickname of 'Barbecue' resulted in memory of his mother's locally popular barbecue chicken. Cherizier and his consolidated gang are busy extorting businesses, hijacking fuel trucks, kidnapping professionals and business owners for ransoms up to $1 million. He terrorizes poor neighbourhoods whose residents deeply oppose President Moise.
Barbecue now controls all of the downtown and critical cross sections, north and south in the opposition-dominated Cite Soleil slum, now living a reign of terror fuelled by gang violence. Victims and human rights groups say Cherizier's G9 gang members loot and burn down shacks and market stalls, rape women, kill randomly and dismember or torch bodies. Moise denies any connection whatever to Cherizier, and Cherizier denies any alliance with Moise. But onlookers put two-and-two together.
Witnesses insist they've seen the gangs in the same armoured vehicles the national police and special security forces use. Cherizier, in fact, was a member of the national police, but was dismissed. Justice Minister Lucmane Delile denounced the gangs, ordering the national police to pursue them. Leading to his swift firing by President Moise. Still, the president denies ties to the gangs. A standing warrant exists against Cherizier for possession of illegal arms and failure to report for duty which had caused his dismissal.
There's a stark resemblance between Cherizier's G9 gang and the horrors visited on the people of Haiti by the Tontons Macoutes paramilitaries used to terrorize Haiti under its former dictator Duvalier and his son Jean Claude. The international aid that came to Haiti's rescue in the wake of the 2010 earthquake where over 200,000 Haitians were killed and leaving 1.5 million Haitians homeless, promised transformation, but most of the international charitable groups that had converged on Haiti have since departed, leaving it to its own devices.
And this is what its own devices have devised. While Haitians were under lockdown under the coronavirus Cherizier took the opportunity to unify disparate street gangs to produce his current mega-gang terrifying the population in the nation's capital. And despite denials on the part of both the president and this champion of gang violence posing as a defender of the poor, it seems obvious there is collusion, and a return to a violent dictatorship.
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| People walk and shop near Petion Ville’s civil state court. credit Garry Pierre-Pierre |
Labels: Dysfunction, Gangs, Haiti, Violence
posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, September 02, 2020
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